How 4 Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” would defeat DRM

And how they nearly got fired for it.

Can digital rights management technology stop the unauthorized spread of copyrighted content? Ten years ago this month, four engineers argued that it can't, forever changing how the world thinks about piracy. Their paper, "The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution" (available as a .doc here) was presented at a security conference in Washington, DC, on November 18, 2002.

By itself, the paper's clever and provocative argument likely would have earned it a broad readership. But the really remarkable thing about the paper is who wrote it: four engineers at Microsoft whose work many expected to be at the foundation of Microsoft's future DRM schemes. The paper's lead author told Ars that the paper's pessimistic view of Hollywood's beloved copy protection schemes almost got him fired. But ten years later, its predictions have proved impressively accurate.

The paper predicted that as information technology gets more powerful, it will grow easier and easier for people to share information with each other. Over time, people will assemble themselves into what the authors called the "darknet." The term encompasses formal peer-to-peer networks such as Napster and BitTorrent, but it also includes other modes of sharing, such as swapping files over a local area network or exchanging USB thumb drives loaded with files.

Once a popular piece of information—say, a movie, a song, or a software title—"leaks" into the darknet, stopping its spread becomes practically impossible. This, the engineers realized, had an important implication: to prevent piracy, digital rights management had to work not just against average users, but against the most tech-savvy users on the planet. It only takes a single user to find a vulnerability in a DRM scheme, strip the protection from the content, and release the unencrypted version to the darknet. Then millions of other users merely need to know how to use ordinary tools such as BitTorrent to get their own copies.

Trusted computing or treacherous computing?

Ars Technica talked to Peter Biddle, the paper's lead author, last week. The basic premise of the paper came from an e-mail Biddle circulated within Microsoft in the late 1990s. The term "darknet" was coined by co-author Bryan Willman, another Microsoft engineer. Two other Microsoft engineers, Paul England and Marcus Peinado, contributed to it.

At the time they wrote the paper, Biddle and his co-authors were working on Microsoft's "Trusted Windows" project, an effort to provide hardware-level authentication features that could make PCs resistant to tampering even by those who have physical access and control. The initiative would go under a variety of names, including Palladium, TCPA, and the Next-Generation Secure Computing Base.

Biddle, who now works at Intel but stressed that he was speaking only for himself in our interview, told us that it was a project fraught with political challenges. Inside Microsoft, people bristled at the implication that vanilla Windows was untrustworthy. Outside Microsoft, critics charged that Biddle's project represented the beginning of the end for the PC as an open platform. They feared that Microsoft would use the technology to exert control over which software could be executed on Windows PCs, freezing out open source operating systems and reducing users' freedom to run the software of their choice.

One widely discussed application for Biddle's technology was digital rights management. Building DRM atop an open, general-purpose computing platform is an inherently difficult problem. Every DRM scheme requires distributing encryption keys or other secrets to users' devices without the users themselves having access to them. But on an open PC, the user has the ability to inspect and modify essentially all data stored on the device, so DRM schemes are inherently insecure.

It was "very challenging for the PC industry to make the same kinds of statements around how secure data could be on the PC compared to closed devices like CE boxes," Biddle told us. Many hoped (or feared) that a "trusted" computing platform could dramatically improve a DRM scheme's tamper-resistance by preventing a machine's owner from inspecting sensitive encryption keys or modifying DRM code. But preventing users from modifying DRM schemes also inherently meant reducing users' control over the devices they owned. The risk of Microsoft locking down everyone's PC provoked an online backlash, with critics calling the technology "treacherous computing."

Biddle says that backlash "took us completely by surprise." He told us that his team didn't "realize the level of entrenchment and fear" about the ways Microsoft might misuse the technology. In his view, the public overreacted to what was designed to be an application-agnostic security technology. "A lot of the things that were said about trustworthy computing being treacherous were actually impossible," he told us.

“I almost got fired”

Biddle says that he and his team realized early on that DRM technology would never succeed in shutting down piracy. He hoped that writing a paper saying so would reassure Microsoft's critics in the technical community that Redmond wasn't planning to lock down the PC in order to satisfy Hollywood. And by making it clear that the people behind Microsoft's "trusted computing" push were not fans of DRM, Biddle hoped he could persuade the technical community to consider other, more benign applications of the technology he was building.

Biddle couldn't be too candid about the link between his paper and the technology he was building. Explicitly admitting that DRM schemes built on "Trusted Windows" wouldn't stop piracy might make it harder for Microsoft to persuade content providers to license its products for Microsoft's technology platforms. Biddle hoped that releasing his paper at a technical security conference would allow him to send a "dog whistle" to the technology community without raising the ire of Hollywood.

It didn't work out that way. "I almost got fired over the paper," Biddle told Ars. "It was extremely controversial." Biddle tried to get buy-in from senior Microsoft executives prior to releasing the paper. But he says they didn't really understand the paper's implications—and particularly how it could strain relationships with content companies—until after it was released. Once the paper was released, Microsoft's got stuck in bureaucratic paralysis. Redmond neither repudiated Biddle's paper nor allowed him to publicly defend it.

At the same time, "the community we thought would draw a connection never drew the connection," Biddle said, referring to anti-DRM activists. "Microsoft was taking so much heat around security and trustworthy computing, that I was not allowed to go out and talk about any of this stuff publicly. I couldn't explain 'guys, we're totally on your side. What we want is a program that's open.'"

A losing battle

While Biddle and his colleagues didn't succeed in allaying the fears of Palladium's critics, the paper's central arguments have held up well. The authors predicted that the emergence of the darknet would produce a technological and legal arms race. They thought content companies and law enforcement would attack those aspects of the darknet that were most centralized, but that the darknet would adapt through greater decentralization. And they predicted that efforts to build secure DRM schemes would continue to fail. All of their predictions have continued to hold true over the last decade.

Both content companies and the US government have pursued increasingly aggressive anti-piracy strategies. The Recording Industry Association of America sued thousands of alleged file-sharers during the last decade, and content companies have sued numerous file-sharing startups out of existence. In 2010, the federal government got into the act, using the powers of the recently passed PRO-IP Act to seize domains and other assets of alleged pirate sites. And they have even begun to arrest key figures in file-sharing networks.

Yet these increased enforcement efforts have barely slowed down the darknet's momentum. A key development has been the emergence of "locker sites" that host infringing files and "link sites" that provide pointers to those files.

"The thing about the locker and link sites is that they can be very lightweight," Biddle told us. They are "not that hard to replicate because they are basically a database." That makes the network as a whole much more robust to law enforcement efforts to shut it down: close down one site and two more pop up in its place.

And while BitTorrent and Megaupload get all the attention, Biddle notes that there are other file-sharing techniques that the government is never going to stop. "Teenagers and twenty-somethings I know routinely will go over to a friend's house with a terabyte drive to swap stuff," he said. They choose the "sneakernet" approach less out of fear of liability than because it's so convenient. "You can have a ton of content on a terabyte drive," he noted.

Yet the content industry continues to try, and fail, to produce secure DRM schemes. Biddle believes this strategy has proved counterproductive because it inconveniences legitimate customers without stopping piracy.

"I'm now finding that for some kinds of content, the illegal is clearly outperforming legal," Biddle said. "That blows me away. I pay for premium cable. It's easier to use BitTorrent to watch Game of Thrones. HBO Go is trying very hard to do a good job," he said, but the user experience just isn't as good. Because HBO Go is a streaming service, he said, it's more vulnerable to network congestion than simply downloading the entire episode from the darknet.

Promoted Comments

I'm a bit surprised that an apparently smart guy like him would be surprised that a paper on the capabilities of the 'darknet' would assuage Microsoft's critics on Palladium/NGSCB/"Trusted Computing"/whatever.

Yes, because of uncontrolled distribution in the background, you can stop the movement of files through peer networks. However, that isn't actually terribly relevant:

1. Free Software(along with commercially minded 'we-remember-what-you-did-to-netscape' pessimists of MS's market power) people don't primarily care about whether "trusted computing" can stop kids from swapping burned bieber CDs and warez. They care about whether it can stop you running what you want to run on the hardware you "own". Can it? Oh yes, yes it can. Not 100% perfectly, but contemporary consoles are getting to the point where hardware attacks are necessary to execute unsigned code, iDevices are spreading the walled garden to the masses, and Microsoft is going all app-store, all the time on their ARM gear. What good is piracy if you can't buy a computer that will execute your booty?

2. Even if your primary concern is piratical, the "darknet" only saves you as long as vendors are willing to ignore legacy formats. All it takes is one person to crack the DRM and release the plaintext version; but only if available consumer devices will actually accept plaintext. Your ipad, say, will process an anonymous mp3, or h.264 video, so team Hollywood and the RIAA crowd are out of luck; but how about an unsigned .ipa file? Not happening. Even if it is 100% structurally valid, it needs an apple key, or an enterprise key, or a dev key(that matches the hardware it is running on, since those are limited to a set number of devices). You can strip all the DRM you want, you'll just have some trouble finding hardware to run it on. Windows RT will play the same game with Windows binaries.

That's the real problem. Yeah, it is impossible to make 100% of DRMed endpoints exfiltration-proof. However, your ability to make 95%+ of endpoints increasingly hostile to anything lacking a trusted DRM signature is constrained only by customer hostility, not by any technological barrier...

I'm a bit surprised that an apparently smart guy like him would be surprised that a paper on the capabilities of the 'darknet' would assuage Microsoft's critics on Palladium/NGSCB/"Trusted Computing"/whatever.

Thank you for give me credit for being apparently smart.

This is becoming my favorite comment thread of all time. Bryan! ______ from Disney! Sweet!

I was surprised about it ten years ago. I think my surprise was comically innocent in hindsight, but so was the lack of technical depth applied by some opponents to TWC.

fuzzyfuzzyfungus wrote:

Free Software(along with commercially minded 'we-remember-what-you-did-to-netscape' pessimists of MS's market power) people don't primarily care about whether "trusted computing" can stop kids from swapping burned bieber CDs and warez. They care about whether it can stop you running what you want to run on the hardware you "own". Can it? Oh yes, yes it can. Not 100% perfectly, but contemporary consoles are getting to the point where hardware attacks are necessary to execute unsigned code, iDevices are spreading the walled garden to the masses, and Microsoft is going all app-store, all the time on their ARM gear. What good is piracy if you can't buy a computer that will execute your booty?

Palladium, as outlined by Seth Schoen at the time (an intelligent analysis that was completely ignored by detractors because it was inconveniently inconsistent with more Luddite views) and now again highlighted by Bryan in his comments wasn't actually capable of keeping SW from running on a PC.

I know it wasn't because we designed it to allow anyone to run SW that was protected from the rest of the system. The TPM is a crypto co-processor connected via the LPC bus. It had none of the (totally fabricated) privilege nor control that would let it control what SW runs on the CPU.

As I said at the time - Palladium treated the rest of Windows as a virus. This includes any SW that might want to peek into a protected environment.

Let me repeat this, to be clear: ANYONE COULD RUN AND PROTECT ANY SW ON THE SYSTEM and it would be protected from EVERYONE ELSE.

This meant that yes, Disney could make a video player which protects video files from many (but not all) kinds of attacks. (eg it didn't protect against Freon, dual-ported memory, or DtoAtoD conversions).

It also meant that you could run SW which protects you, and whatever stuff you choose to put in it, from Disney. There was no single root key model, no trust chain that MSFT controlled, and no god-privilege that would let MSFT or anyone look at protected secrets at runtime.

SW was protected from SW.

Could other people - like Apple - use similar technologies to create systems that won't run arbitrary code? Of course. But that wasn't part of our threat model and it wasn't what we were building.

So why did we do it? Because there's good to be had in protecting stuff. The darknet creates network effects for stuff that is a global secret in high demand. Lots of stuff in need of protection are not global secrets nor in high demand.

fuzzyfuzzyfungus wrote:

2. Even if your primary concern is piratical, the "darknet" only saves you as long as vendors are willing to ignore legacy formats. All it takes is one person to crack the DRM and release the plaintext version; but only if available consumer devices will actually accept plaintext. Your ipad, say, will process an anonymous mp3, or h.264 video, so team Hollywood and the RIAA crowd are out of luck; but how about an unsigned .ipa file? Not happening. Even if it is 100% structurally valid, it needs an apple key, or an enterprise key, or a dev key(that matches the hardware it is running on, since those are limited to a set number of devices). You can strip all the DRM you want, you'll just have some trouble finding hardware to run it on. Windows RT will play the same game with Windows binaries.

I agree that closed systems have those characteristics and I applaud your railing against them. I'd be deeply surprised (again!) to find that you are more committed or passionate than I about the need for open devices that will run and protect arbitrary code.

fuzzyfuzzyfungus wrote:

That's the real problem. Yeah, it is impossible to make 100% of DRMed endpoints exfiltration-proof. However, your ability to make 95%+ of endpoints increasingly hostile to anything lacking a trusted DRM signature is constrained only by customer hostility, not by any technological barrier...

When Palladium fell apart we were able to salvage a great drive encryption solution (BitLocker) from its ashes. BitLocker treats all data as equally worthy of protection and by design has to treat the possessor of a PC as a potential attacker. I'm quite proud of that.

2 posts | registered Nov 28, 2012

Timothy B. Lee
Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times. Emailtimothy.lee@arstechnica.com//Twitter@binarybits

212 Reader Comments

The content industry seems to be heading down the "War on drugs" path. The initial thought is to implement a "simple" solution to a complex problem - make drugs/file copying illegal. Next step is to vigorously pursue the "wrong-doer", and prosecute them to the full extent of the law.

What's the US prison population like nowadays? And how many of those people are at the bottom of the drug-dealing chain? Is locking them up really benefiting society?

The other thing that's happened as a side-effect of the "war on drugs" is that it's now bloody hard to get hold of the most effective pain-killing medication - because you might misuse it. Similarly, the "war on piracy" makes it harder and harder to use the content you're paying for, in order to try to stop some naughty people.

So - has the "war on drugs" been effective? Yes, if you count numbers arrested and imprisoned. Yes if you point to the street price of drugs as a deterrent (when in fact it means that the addicted have to commit more crimes for their daily fix). No, if you look at whether it has provided any benefit to society.

And the "war on piracy" is going the same way.

I already pointed out the flaw in this argument in an earlier post.

Anyone who does this has no understanding of either situation.

Drugs are victimless - the user is the one who is victimized. There is some social cost, but we tax them to pay for that. In theory, anyway, that is the solution, though some still need to be banned.

I will also note that you are mistaking "most effective" for "best". The problem is that while yeah, morphine IS good at killing pain, it is addictive and has very nasty side effects. You have to consider the totality of the situation to determine which are -best-. If you need morphine, you need a doctor. Period. So its not bad in any way for it to be prescription only.

In any event, what's wrong with this? Piracy is not a victimless crime. The victim is the company that produces the content, as well as all people who are following the law - you are stealing from them by not paying for it. You are leeching from their output. That means, in other words, that piracy is completely distinct, because it is not a victimless crime. When things are NOT victimless, we DO crack down on them. Indeed, it is this very same logic that is used to prevent people from polluting the environment - you are harming others while gaining yourself, and not paying the true costs of what you're doing.

The people who pay legitimately are victimized because they have to pay the cost of YOU stealing it (thus hiking the prices on them) and the company that is being pirated from loses revenue.

So no, its not analogous at all. Putting everyone in jail is infeasible, but you don't have to. You just hit the big guys when they become too big. It is whack-a-mole, but just because there are always more burglars doesn't mean we don't put thieves in jail. Just because there are always more murderers doesn't mean we don't put murderers in jail. The fact that you never have no crime doesn't mean that enforcing the law is without meaning.

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The content industry's business model is really pretty stupid. They make the content and publish it. Then they hope you to buy it without realizing that you can just copy it and share it over the internet. They know there's not a thing they can do about it and the technology is making it easier by the day. Laws can't stop it, DRM can't stop it. Yet they persist in this obviously flawed business model. Selling copies doesn't work. You can't sell something that is non-exclusive and non-rivalrous. It breaks the supply and demand curve.

Except, of course, that it is illegal to do so.

Anyone can be killed anytime. Most people just don't accept that as part of their reality. There are RULES. People can't just walk up to you on the street and shank you in the neck. Except they can. They -totally- can. But they don't. Why? Because it is against our rules. The rules that our society lives on.

You can, in fact, sell this stuff. And people - good people - will buy it. Bad ones - won't. They're thieves. They're criminals. They're the leeches of society. And yeah, you never eliminate them all. Its pretty much impossible.

The trick, then, is to hurt them via the proper routes. You socially ostracize them. You attack their suppliers, and destroy them - not just hurt them, destroy them. No money. No life. They're criminals, and they can't get jobs because they can't be trusted to keep the secrets that companies require, nor will any investor touch them, because they're felons. It won't stop everyone - it never does - but if you cause sufficient damage, honest people won't go there.

You have to understand that society is based on symbolism and rules. Until you understand that, you understand nothing. I can walk up to you on the street and kill you. I can break into your house and steal all your stuff. I could take all your money out of your bank account. But I won't. Why? Because I live within the bounds of society. I am a "good person". A lock only keeps an honest person honest, as my grandfather said - if they really want in, they can get in.

If we lived soley on what was possible, our society would be utter anarchy. We live in rules because anarchy is bad. You don't want me ruling with a gun. You don't want me extracting the cost of protection from you by force. You don't want any of those things, because you would be dead or exploited.

In reality, nothing keeps us honest save the fact that society says we should be so. The fact that yes, we can copy anything we want off the internet doesn't mean that we should do so, any more than the fact that I can stab you in the neck or rob your house means that I should do so. Can and should are different, and indeed, that is at the heart of what it means to be a person - that understanding, that can and should are indeed distinct things. Morality is all about what we can do, but choose not to.

The problem with your pie in the sky solution is that it is what we call "central planning". It doesn't work. Its not a simple solution - it is a non-solution.

The reason we live in a society with the structure that we have is that it does indeed work - people try, and strive, and produce, and they win or die based on whether or not people will buy their completed work. Your idiotic scheme does not reward success at production - it rewards hucksterism. What gets produced is not produced by the best, but produced by those who are best at convincing "the public".

And this is why people like you fail.

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But the content publishers want control. They want absolute and total control. They feel that if they can maintain absolute control, they will be able to suss out every last dime of profit that can be had. This attitude is crushing the life from the industry. They need to go. They are obsolete and they are the problem with the content industry today.

Instead, you want control. You want the power.

You are scum. You are the leech that lives off of society.

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This isn't about capitalism vs. a planned economy (which isn't the same thing as communism). Whether or not piracy is punished, they engage in unplanned economic and receive more than the input as profit. Implying that the possession of money an indicator of "deserving" is incorrect, many non-productive people have a lot of money and the ability to pay for products many productive people don't have the ability to pay. \

This is what is known as an inefficiency. Indeed, it is a problem with all societies - it is very difficult to create a perfectly efficient system. All systems have inefficiencies. Possession of money is indeed intended, in a capitalistic system, to be to the deserving, and indeed capitalism is the single best system we have ever created to do exactly that. The primary problem is that unfettered capitalism suffers from its own inefficiencies, such as monopolies. Part of the role of government is to make sure that wealth does not accumulate indefinitely in the hands of people who have wealth, as opposed to those who have earned wealth.

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Finally, you're assuming that the most efficient resource allocation is centralized by the producers, when it's equally possible that it could lead to an inefficient allocation of resources. What if they get all this money and plop it in a bank account? The reserve kept by the bank is effectively out of society. What if it's used to build a giant-ass mansion (not that they would have that much)? What if they saved the money, never worked again, passed it on to their heirs, who also had enough to never work again (again, not on what they could make)? They could hire a larger team, and all the team members could be less efficient than when working in smaller teams. All are inefficient concentrations of resources.

Its not really an assumption - we've seen other systems of distribution and they really don't work. Communist and fascist countries, anarchies and dictatorships... we've seen a lot of variations on economic systems, and yet the structured economies of the west over the last century or so have proven the most successful by far, and the most egalitarian.

I will note that the way that banks work - something you apparently have no understanding of - is that they keep a percentage of deposits back, and then use the rest to loan back out. This is a multiplier - so if you keep 10% reserve, you can loan out 90% of what you got in deposits. But what happens then? They buy something, and then that person then takes that 90% and puts it back into the bank - and then the bank loans out 81% of the original amount. And so on and so on it goes. In the end, you'll find that you've effectively multiplied the amount of money in the economy by a factor proportional to the reserve. However, if you keep too little reserve, then if the bank needs to give out a bunch of money, they can't, and then you end up with huge problems and the economy falls apart.

What about a giant mansion? Then they built a giant mansion, and they paid for that in resources - and other people, the guys who built it, got the resources for it, ect. get paid. The money goes back in. Is it the most efficient possible application? Not necessarily, but it is a reward for success, and it encourages others to wish for success as well.

What if they saved their money? Sure, that's more labor lost. I will note that estate taxes are intended to prevent heirs from accumulating money indefinitely - indeed, I advocate a 100% estate tax on estates of over $10 million for this very reason.

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All of this comes down to the basics of economics that aren't really true. We assume that people are profit maximizers when they just do enough to get by. We assume that the more money someone's given the greater motivation they have to produce; as someone posted above it doesn't. If 2Dboy was motivated by money, they wouldn't have quit their jobs. When you no longer assume these things, the question becomes is it better to provide enough incentive to take money off the table or to maximize the profit? Especially when maximizing the profit significantly decreases the total audience? Are we arguing over marginal profits that face shrinking returns in productivity?

Money is not the only reward in life, but that doesn't change the purpose of money, which is to reward productivity and efficiently distribute resources (barter systems are highly inefficient).

I will also note that you are making a very elementary mistake; people have different risk:reward ratios. Quitting your job is a risk, but if you make more money that way, it is a (potential) reward, and the more rewarding you make it, the more people are willing to take the risk.

Taking money off the table doesn't work, because people are, fundamentally, lazy in general. While not all humans are lazy, most are.

Incidentally, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever why total audience counterbalances profit. Audience size is NOT inherently a good thing, and pirates are actually bad - they aren't actually part of the audience, they're leeches.

It makes it exceedingly difficult for Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, since more of them runs on the server than it does on the local PC. But at the same time it's hardcore bullshit because the single player game now requires you be on the internet. This doesn't help or add to the game in any single fucking way, but they did it anyway. Blizzard's quickly learning that they can jerk their users around hard and get away with it.

Dunno about starcraft (never played it), but with the auction house being a massive part of diablo it is critical to keep bots out of the game and the only way to achieve that is by forcing single player games to happen online.

It's not just about piracy. Diablo would fall to shit if they allowed bots, and so far they've done a great job keeping them out.

Short of shutting down the internet, piracy will happen. Even without it, it will happen. You would need to wrest the control of every computer from the hands of everyone who owns one and enforce some sort of universal lock down to prevent it, and even then you'd fail. Legal attacks and DRM are flawed non-solutions to a business model problem.

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Instead, you want control. You want the power.

People are usually willing to pay a fair price for a good product. DRM encumbered products aren't good, rarely come at a fair price, and give them post-purchase power they've never have nor deserve.

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You are scum. You are the leech that lives off of society.

Either you're mad or you're incapable of making a point without resorting to personal attacks and name-calling. I refer to the first line of this post.

It makes it exceedingly difficult for Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, since more of them runs on the server than it does on the local PC. But at the same time it's hardcore bullshit because the single player game now requires you be on the internet. This doesn't help or add to the game in any single fucking way, but they did it anyway. Blizzard's quickly learning that they can jerk their users around hard and get away with it.

Dunno about starcraft (never played it), but with the auction house being a massive part of diablo it is critical to keep bots out of the game and the only way to achieve that is by forcing single player games to happen online.

It's not just about piracy. Diablo would fall to shit if they allowed bots, and so far they've done a great job keeping them out.

There's actually another good reason as well - you -can't- start a single player character and then have to start over to play with your friends. This is actually a real benefit to the end user.

No, this is more, as TorrentFreak's one commentator calls it: Failure to sell. Meaning you are either charging too much for your product or the codicils (DRM) make it unattractive compared to an 'infringing' copy.

Free has the twin attractiveness of enjoying the benefits of possessing the content, AND keeping the money that in a legitimate transaction would have gone to the creator. Why would any self-indulgent person deny themselves those pluses?

Simple: The risk of something being virus infested on the internet, the fact that most people are HONEST and prefer to buy things when given a choice to and those things are offered for a reasonable price, wanting to encourage the creator to make more products (sequels to a game or TV show, along with additional music)....

I could keep on going but those are the three major issues.

Kind of hard to remain honest in a world that apparently rewards being dishonest. "Come on try it. You're not hurting anyone, and those money grubbers deserve it."

It's not just about piracy. Diablo would fall to shit if they allowed bots, and so far they've done a great job keeping them out.

Nonsense.

Starcraft 2 is online-only for the purposes of taking control of its use in tournaments worldwide. It's impossible for a 3rd party to bypass Blizzard.

Like I said, I don't know about starcraft, never played it.

microlith wrote:

Diablo 3 is online-only to ram the RMAH down everyone's throats. Gear drops are balanced around it.

I don't see people using the RMAH, everyone I see is using the gold auction house, which doesn't cost anything, just makes the game more fun.

microlith wrote:

The presence of an offline single player mode would not impact either of those in the slightest.

Yes it would, because people like a friend of mine who install bots to game the auction house would not be banned. Blizzard only caught him because single player is online only. His account would not have been deleted if it wasn't for their decision to make single player games be online too.

For software, things just need to be priced reasonably. Individuals aren't going to pay $300 for office or $200 for an OS that isn't even including a DVD player.

Try to clarify this for me, is this ragging on MS or Apple? I have never heard of an OS including a DVD player. What form of reality do you exist in where a copy of software actually includes the hardware to access movies? Or is this about Xbox? But it comes with a (weird-ish) DVD player.

"The risk of Microsoft locking down everyone's PC provoked an online backlash, with critics calling the technology "treacherous computing.""

This is happening now, yet I'm not hearing many in the tech media kicking up the media storm to prevent it happening. The reason being is that the dominant future computing platform is not under the control of Microsoft, rather Google. DRM is silently and insidiously coming to dominate Android via Google-Play and its Google lock-in, yet its insidious nature and the false belief that Android is somehow "open", as well as a huge dose of Google-fanboyism mean that there are few in the tech media willing to speak out to stop it.

We need a viable DRM-free alternative app store on Android to Google Play -- there is a business model there whereby developers could be compensated with a greater cut of app sales in a guaranteed DRM-free store.

That's the real problem. Yeah, it is impossible to make 100% of DRMed endpoints exfiltration-proof. However, your ability to make 95%+ of endpoints increasingly hostile to anything lacking a trusted DRM signature is constrained only by customer hostility, not by any technological barrier...

I think the best they can do is to make "turning off" the drm signature lock at the hardware level an event that voids the windows-warranty

the hardware side would be heading into anti trust [anti competitive] territory if they prevent it's easy use by all

"How 4 Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” would defeat DRM". I would say that "proved" isn't what they did. They theorized or posited. I don't know what it is Ars' editors do, but editing apparently isn't it.

This is what is known as an inefficiency. Indeed, it is a problem with all societies - it is very difficult to create a perfectly efficient system. All systems have inefficiencies. Possession of money is indeed intended, in a capitalistic system, to be to the deserving, and indeed capitalism is the single best system we have ever created to do exactly that. The primary problem is that unfettered capitalism suffers from its own inefficiencies, such as monopolies. Part of the role of government is to make sure that wealth does not accumulate indefinitely in the hands of people who have wealth, as opposed to those who have earned wealth.

Its not really an assumption - we've seen other systems of distribution and they really don't work. Communist and fascist countries, anarchies and dictatorships... we've seen a lot of variations on economic systems, and yet the structured economies of the west over the last century or so have proven the most successful by far, and the most egalitarian.

I will note that the way that banks work - something you apparently have no understanding of - is that they keep a percentage of deposits back, and then use the rest to loan back out. This is a multiplier - so if you keep 10% reserve, you can loan out 90% of what you got in deposits. But what happens then? They buy something, and then that person then takes that 90% and puts it back into the bank - and then the bank loans out 81% of the original amount. And so on and so on it goes. In the end, you'll find that you've effectively multiplied the amount of money in the economy by a factor proportional to the reserve. However, if you keep too little reserve, then if the bank needs to give out a bunch of money, they can't, and then you end up with huge problems and the economy falls apart.

What about a giant mansion? Then they built a giant mansion, and they paid for that in resources - and other people, the guys who built it, got the resources for it, ect. get paid. The money goes back in. Is it the most efficient possible application? Not necessarily, but it is a reward for success, and it encourages others to wish for success as well.

What if they saved their money? Sure, that's more labor lost. I will note that estate taxes are intended to prevent heirs from accumulating money indefinitely - indeed, I advocate a 100% estate tax on estates of over $10 million for this very reason.

Money is not the only reward in life, but that doesn't change the purpose of money, which is to reward productivity and efficiently distribute resources (barter systems are highly inefficient).

I will also note that you are making a very elementary mistake; people have different risk:reward ratios. Quitting your job is a risk, but if you make more money that way, it is a (potential) reward, and the more rewarding you make it, the more people are willing to take the risk.

Taking money off the table doesn't work, because people are, fundamentally, lazy in general. While not all humans are lazy, most are.

Incidentally, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever why total audience counterbalances profit. Audience size is NOT inherently a good thing, and pirates are actually bad - they aren't actually part of the audience, they're leeches.

Please don't make assumptions about my knowledge because I reached a different conclusion. I'm well aware of the multiplier, the MPC, and fractional reserve banking. That's why I said the reserve. If the money is put into the bank and never comes out than a fraction of that money is lost to society. If the money is entirely spent on productive activities than the whole amount of money is subject to the MPC, not the portion kept by the reserve requirement. It's very possible that some pirates have a higher MPC than the World of Goo developers.

In the case of the giant mansion, yes the money goes back into the economy, but the resources have been used very slightly lowering the supply curve. The land is irreplaceable. It is a reward for success, and success should to be rewarded because it is an important part of encouraging others to produce. However, it's reasonable to assume that the rewards achieved for success are subject to diminishing returns; that a substantial part of the reward structure is gaining the advantage, not the size of the advantage gained.

This gets back to differential risk reward structures. Yes, more people might be driven to make things if the reward is greater, but what size of advantage gained offers the greatest possible returns? At what point does the size of the increase in wealth become an inefficient allocation of resources?

Pirates aren't leeches and this is an important distinction. Leeches are parasitic. They harm the host for their own well being. Pirates don't harm the creator, they just don't help them either. They are commensalist entities. Pirates gain access to entertainment, but take nothing in return.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commensalism

It's arguable that pirates create a culture where people do not spend to access media; but the success of pay what you want efforts, F2P, and studies showing pirates as prodigious entertainment spenders argue that this is not the case.

Well yeah, DRM punishes the buyer, not the pirate. The only real DRM that I "like" is Steam because overall, while my games are locked to Steam, Steam itself adds a ton of value to my purchases in the forms of easy updates, friends list, easy multiplayer, workshop...

Hollywood will never ask the question "how do we add value to combat piracy" like Gabe Newell did. I do believe that DRM-free is not a possibility (World of Goo 90%+ piracy rate anyone?) but give the buyers added value. Steam does it. iTunes does it with all the cool extra LP stuff. The question should be "What can we offer our customers that makes them come back?"

iTunes does not DRM their music anymore... Which in turn made me buy more music. I am still much more leery of buying Movie/TV content through it, because that is still DRM'ed. I still get some video content through them because their ecosystem works well for me, it is the DRM that holds me back. I should be allowed to format shift content and not have to worry about a company going under leaving me with no way to unlock content I payed for.

The term "Digital Rights Management" frames the issue following theviewpoint of their perpetrators. "Digital Restrictions Management"refers to the same features but frames the issue from the viewpoint oftheir victims. To use either term is to take a side. Why takethe side of the perpetrators?

DRM is an injustice. We cheer when people break DRM schemes,but to really get rid of it, we need to make DRM illegal.Framing the issue from the viewpoint of its victims is crucialfor building the movement that will do this.

I usually call DRM "digital handcuffs", which explains why it is aninjustice.

Out of 175 posts, about 4 make some mention of security. This would be funny if it wasn't so depressing. (I'll save you the trouble of reading further if you're not interested. I'm going to rant about "cyber-attacks.")

Pretty much all the comments and even the article itself rant about who should own what or who should get paid for what and how much (everyone agrees) DRM sucks. Basically everyone is focused on money and convenience.

Do you understand how a magician performs magic tricks? Distraction. The magician's skill is to divert your attention from what he is actually doing, RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. Several years ago when those dot posters that you stared at long enough to see a 3-D image were popular at shopping malls, I imagined a great scheme to set a bunch of those up and send in a professional pick-pocket to steal peoples stuff. People would stand still for minutes at at time, transfixed by those images, completely oblivious to their surroundings.

Right now, everyone is transfixed on the whole DRM, intellectual property rights, and why can't I get what I want for free. Well, be careful what you wish for. Keep in mind Larry Niven's philosophy of TANSTAAFL (there ain't no such thing as a free lunch).

Let's take for example, Iran and it's president Amadamnnutjob. I would dearly love someone in the press to get him to comment on how he feels about the who DRM/copy-protection debate (and nasty little surprises like Stuxnet). Do you think his opinion has changed over the last few years?

I hope you get the gist of my point. Do you want to be able to freely download "The Avengers" or "Black-Ops 2"? Okay, do you mind if it also happens to brick your expensive gaming rig or if your computer gets used as part of a zombie-net to attack the DoD networks your local power company? Are you willing to bet your life on Symantec or Avast to keep that from happening?

How about your privacy? If an agent from the NSA or FBI comes to your house and demands to install a monitoring device on your cable modem, you would probably freak, right? Oh hey look, the latest release of "Diablo"! Awesome, man! Dude, I was able to "jail-break" my iPhone 5 if two minutes with this cool hack I just downloaded!

Does DRM or SOPA or PIPA prevent any of this? Not in the least. At best, they're no more than a speed-bump. Kind of like U.S, forces guarding the DMZ in Korea.

Pretty much everyone everyone who is not making a 6, 7 or 8 figure salary at Universal or Disney or Paramount (and their lawyers) agrees that our copyright laws are about as stupid as Gen. Custer. They annoy consumers, screw the creators and line the pockets of corporate lawyers, period. Okay already! We all get it! For fksu-sake, let move on already!

If your main concern is that you should be able to download and share whatever you want and watch/play it wherever you want then you need to seriously contemplate why you are running around with your cranium shoved up your Colon.

You think I'm a moron? Okay, I've been called worse. I had an experience last week where I went into a fast-food restaurant to get something to eat. I don't usually carry cash anymore, so when I found out their credit/debit machine wasn't working, I looked at the $4 in my wallet and ended up leaving to eat across the street where they had a working machine. I was in a different state, at night, with almost no cash and it took about a minute to realize that if all the ATM machines went down for a few days, I could end up starving and with no cash to buy gas, I would be seriously screwed.

To TheDarkerPhantom, there is a reason why people defend piracy: no actual physical loss = not stealing in the slightest.

This is a lame duck excuse trying to defend a unethical and non-moral act.

If you pirate a television show that costs money to view, and you don't pay for that content, then you are taking money from the person who created the content in the first place. The defense of "I would never have purchased in the first place" is again a lame duck excuse, if you would never purchase the content, why are you viewing the content in the first place?

(snip)

Actually, I do alot of "cuz its free" activities that I would rarely pay for otherwise, thats the point. There are those things I pay for online, and then theres those that fall into that "cuz its free" category. Another words, the ONLY reason I watch some stuff is because its free. So your argument fails here. The free content I view will rarely translate into a sale, so no money lost in this case.

I realized a long time ago that the reason you can't stop infringement is because art is speech. How do you stop speech without violating the first amendment? You can't. Copyright is an infringement on the right to free speech for the purpose to encourage more art so that we can use that art to create even more art and so on. Now, it's just a tool to own culture that belongs to everyone and prevent it from ever being used by anyone other than it's "owner".

I wonder how many engineers Microsoft has lost due to not listening to them or punishing them because they gave them facts on problems that were presented to them? Pretty depressing to think about considering as a kid I always thought it would be awesome to work for Microsoft as a programmer and now i'm a part of me is glad I never went for it.

the problem with that is, it has nothing to do with microsoft. you could work in any large corporation and be kicked in the face for releasing the same info.

at a certain point, work becomes political. the more important and far reaching your work, the more inherently political it becomes. this is a problem for ALL companies from microsoft to apple to dell to bank of america to wallmart etc...

we were raised to be honest but in the real world, at work, sometimes absolute honesty can damage important relationships, deals and whatnot. often you have to sidestep truth, rough it up a bit, disregard it outright in the name of professionalism. sometimes, the truth ends up hurting a lot of people so simple things like personal integrity isn't as black n white any longer.

in fact, as you climb, your ability to navigate and wage corporate political warfare is often seen as a requirement.

if you are a project manager, for example, you can't risk polarising the different departments you need to work with because you lacked the necessary skills to get ppl to work together. things like these are political skill sets.

To TheDarkerPhantom, there is a reason why people defend piracy: no actual physical loss = not stealing in the slightest.

This is a lame duck excuse trying to defend a unethical and non-moral act.

If you pirate a television show that costs money to view, and you don't pay for that content, then you are taking money from the person who created the content in the first place. The defense of "I would never have purchased in the first place" is again a lame duck excuse, if you would never purchase the content, why are you viewing the content in the first place?

(snip)

Actually, I do alot of "cuz its free" activities that I would rarely pay for otherwise, thats the point. There are those things I pay for online, and then theres those that fall into that "cuz its free" category. Another words, the ONLY reason I watch some stuff is because its free. So your argument fails here. The free content I view will rarely translate into a sale, so no money lost in this case.

same here. the free stuff i consume is only because it is free. often, no matter what it wouldn't have amounted to a sale. of course there are free stuff that i did end up paying for, because it was actually good. back in the days before all the legalese on mp3 sharing, i got a lot of songs that i never even listened to. ultimately, it became, for me, a sampling. the songs i liked, i ended up purchasing when they became available to purchase. the ones i haven't paid for, simply aren't worth it. many of those have even been deleted.

I realized a long time ago that the reason you can't stop infringement is because art is speech. How do you stop speech without violating the first amendment? You can't. Copyright is an infringement on the right to free speech for the purpose to encourage more art so that we can use that art to create even more art and so on. Now, it's just a tool to own culture that belongs to everyone and prevent it from ever being used by anyone other than it's "owner".

You didn't "realize" anything. You made up facts that let your reach the conclusion you wanted to reach.Reality tip: The first amendment isn't stopping any copyright infringement cases. Law tip: Both the copyright clause and the 1st amendment are in the constitution. This means that both have equal legal standing.

In order to understand DRM in the current market one must look at things from the perspective of someone accountable to investors at a big content company: just how the hell can they avoid dealing with piracy in some way? The Pirate Bay has the same currency as iTunes for many people; it doesn't matter if there aren't that many real lost sales; it doesn't matter if the revenues are still going up; it doesn't matter if digital piracy is easy to hide if the user is knowledgeable; it doesn't matter if everyone is completely happy with the money they have. All that matters is that the unauthorized, unregulated, cheap product is just as easy (if not easier) to get than the official version on the regular Internet. And everybody knows it.

Imagine if moonshine were suddenly available in any liquor store, right next to the legal stuff. It wouldn't matter if people bought it. It wouldn't matter if illegal production never actually increased. The established industry would still feel the need to do something about the problem because it stops being an underground thing that can't really be dealt with completely and starts being something with possibly-stupid-but-easily-implementable solutions that will be discussed when concerned shareholders start asking questions.

There is no "peer-to-peer" and until THIS problem is addressed, nothing will ever be solved. It is "peer-to-ISP-to-backbone-to-ISP-to-peer" and only the "peers" are making no money. The middleman mules who deliver this contraband are making billions of dollars for it's service, knowing darn well what's in the package they are moving from peer to peer, but looking the other way.

ASCAP figured this problem out a century ago. You must charge for intellectual property at the last point of distribution, not after consumption. Radio stations and concert halls pay songwriter fees, ASCAP figures out what's being consumed and pays the owners accordingly. ISPs are radio stations, nothing more. They charge a premium for delivering your BitTorrent stuff, as their high speed services would be less desirable without doing so, but they keep that premium and share none of it with the content owners. This is fixable, and ridiculous for anyone to argue that it might be hard to keep track.

ISPs must be held criminally liable for delivering pirated goods unless they collect and disperse proper IP fees. But since billion dollar corporations are no longer subject to the laws of this land, it ain't gonna happen, so might as well attack the mom of the dorm-room kid who shares with his buddies. Cowards.

There is no "peer-to-peer" and until THIS problem is addressed, nothing will ever be solved. It is "peer-to-ISP-to-backbone-to-ISP-to-peer" and only the "peers" are making no money. The middleman mules who deliver this contraband are making billions of dollars for it's service, knowing darn well what's in the package they are moving from peer to peer, but looking the other way.

ASCAP figured this problem out a century ago. You must charge for intellectual property at the last point of distribution, not after consumption. Radio stations and concert halls pay songwriter fees, ASCAP figures out what's being consumed and pays the owners accordingly. ISPs are radio stations, nothing more. They charge a premium for delivering your BitTorrent stuff, as their high speed services would be less desirable without doing so, but they keep that premium and share none of it with the content owners. This is fixable, and ridiculous for anyone to argue that it might be hard to keep track.

ISPs must be held criminally liable for delivering pirated goods unless they collect and disperse proper IP fees. But since billion dollar corporations are no longer subject to the laws of this land, it ain't gonna happen, so might as well attack the mom of the dorm-room kid who shares with his buddies. Cowards.

There is no "peer-to-peer" and until THIS problem is addressed, nothing will ever be solved. It is "peer-to-ISP-to-backbone-to-ISP-to-peer" and only the "peers" are making no money. The middleman mules who deliver this contraband are making billions of dollars for it's service, knowing darn well what's in the package they are moving from peer to peer, but looking the other way.

ASCAP figured this problem out a century ago. You must charge for intellectual property at the last point of distribution, not after consumption. Radio stations and concert halls pay songwriter fees, ASCAP figures out what's being consumed and pays the owners accordingly. ISPs are radio stations, nothing more. They charge a premium for delivering your BitTorrent stuff, as their high speed services would be less desirable without doing so, but they keep that premium and share none of it with the content owners. This is fixable, and ridiculous for anyone to argue that it might be hard to keep track.

ISPs must be held criminally liable for delivering pirated goods unless they collect and disperse proper IP fees. But since billion dollar corporations are no longer subject to the laws of this land, it ain't gonna happen, so might as well attack the mom of the dorm-room kid who shares with his buddies. Cowards.

Hell no, ASCAP and BMG are a bunch of crooks and thieves! They take "fees" from people they have no right to for content they don't have the authority to and then they fail to distribute those collected funds to all of the represented artists. Only the cream of the crop get a cut of the ASCAP funds and the remainder goes to the pigs that run the racket. We do not need a system like that on our ISP. ASCAP needs to die with fire.

The more realistic approach would be to throw out the retail model and take up the crowdfunding model. Cut out the middleman.

Hollywood will never ask the question "how do we add value to combat piracy" like Gabe Newell did. I do believe that DRM-free is not a possibility (World of Goo 90%+ piracy rate anyone?) but give the buyers added value. Steam does it. iTunes does it with all the cool extra LP stuff. The question should be "What can we offer our customers that makes them come back?"

World of Goo had a high piracy rate, yes. Two men still made hundreds of thousands of dollars for a year's labor. If developers are making far more in return than they put in, enough to buy houses etc. and still have a marketable skill to fall back on, why is DRM really necessary?

This is such a terrible argument. They made a great product, and with everyone that played it, they deserve much more than they got.

That question has nothing to do with DRM however. Stop buying into this false 'choice'. The game would have been available everywhere no matter what. People keep confusing DRM with something that actually works, even in an article where someone who designed DRM for a living says outright that the principle of DRM itself is flawed. Which is something so obvious I truly don't understand why were still living with it after all these years.

The future should be no DRM, not "I like THIS particular DRM because it's idiot proof".

Which would be the ultimate goal, but if the industry is going to be stupid they should at least be directed to the one form that is the least annoying. And if it concerns you, do as I do and stockpile Steam-removing cracks for each game you buy as insurance.

Quote:

DRM only hurts legitimate customers.

As always. No reason not to arm yourself in kind. AnyDVD HD hooooooo.....

I completely agree with you. I purchase all my games on Steam, but I always look for the appropriate patch that would strip the DRM in the event there is no Steam anymore. It is for this reason I don't like the six strike laws coming, although I suppose I could go to court and have Valve show that I paid for the content, right? Need to continue to review VPN services in other countries and make a decision soon I guess...

Well yeah, DRM punishes the buyer, not the pirate. The only real DRM that I "like" is Steam because overall, while my games are locked to Steam, Steam itself adds a ton of value to my purchases in the forms of easy updates, friends list, easy multiplayer, workshop...

Hollywood will never ask the question "how do we add value to combat piracy" like Gabe Newell did. I do believe that DRM-free is not a possibility (World of Goo 90%+ piracy rate anyone?) but give the buyers added value. Steam does it. iTunes does it with all the cool extra LP stuff. The question should be "What can we offer our customers that makes them come back?"

If a creator is properly remunerated even with the existence of widespread illegal activity than what is the real harm of the activity? And how would DRM prevent such an activity?

So if someone hacks into your bank account and takes 90% of your savings, you're okay with that as long as you can still make your rent?

That's a stupid argument, comrade.

What are your feelings on inflammatory non-sequiturs?

You might also look into a reply to the second question, which is at least as important as the first, but which you (and everyone else piling onto the 'terrible argument' bandwagon) appear to have neglected.

Well yeah, DRM punishes the buyer, not the pirate. The only real DRM that I "like" is Steam because overall, while my games are locked to Steam, Steam itself adds a ton of value to my purchases in the forms of easy updates, friends list, easy multiplayer, workshop...

Hollywood will never ask the question "how do we add value to combat piracy" like Gabe Newell did. I do believe that DRM-free is not a possibility (World of Goo 90%+ piracy rate anyone?) but give the buyers added value. Steam does it. iTunes does it with all the cool extra LP stuff. The question should be "What can we offer our customers that makes them come back?"

People can connect pirated goods, and have, to Steam.

So? I didn't call Steam infallible DRM, I called it the right way to do business. People don't mind the DRM or aren't even aware of it because of the benefits the platform has to offer.

This is why I have not bought a PC game in years. I actually like to think that I own the game I just bought.

I always felt that no matter what you do, Pirates will always find a way to get their stuff for free. DRM doesn't even slow them down. If a group of guys can come up wityh a way to circumvent the NES's hardware to get non-liscenced games to work on it, what is going to stop someone today from doing the same thing to Diablo 3 or Far Cry 3?

Steam is a step in the right direction, but even that can't stop the pirates. Please give us gamers a little credit. We will buy your stuff if you do not treat every person that could buy your game as a criminal.

I realized a long time ago that the reason you can't stop infringement is because art is speech. How do you stop speech without violating the first amendment? You can't. Copyright is an infringement on the right to free speech for the purpose to encourage more art so that we can use that art to create even more art and so on. Now, it's just a tool to own culture that belongs to everyone and prevent it from ever being used by anyone other than it's "owner".

You didn't "realize" anything. You made up facts that let your reach the conclusion you wanted to reach.Reality tip: The first amendment isn't stopping any copyright infringement cases. Law tip: Both the copyright clause and the 1st amendment are in the constitution. This means that both have equal legal standing.

It's immaterial what the law says. Don't you get it? People are going to say what they're going to say, whether that's by sharing files, writing songs, making games, or marching in protest. Those things are all forms of speech. When a person puts their mind to saying what they want to say, there isn't a damn thing any law or mechanism that can do to stop it. If people want to speak, they will speak.

And just for the record Mr. Constitutional Scholar, Article I, Section 8 describes powers that congress shall have. It does not reserve any rights nor establish mandates to do so. Conversely, the first amendment does mandate that freedom of speech be unabridged by the government. Don't like it? Too bad, it's a fact.

"The risk of Microsoft locking down everyone's PC provoked an online backlash, with critics calling the technology "treacherous computing.""

This is happening now, yet I'm not hearing many in the tech media kicking up the media storm to prevent it happening. The reason being is that the dominant future computing platform is not under the control of Microsoft, rather Google. DRM is silently and insidiously coming to dominate Android via Google-Play and its Google lock-in, yet its insidious nature and the false belief that Android is somehow "open", as well as a huge dose of Google-fanboyism mean that there are few in the tech media willing to speak out to stop it.

We need a viable DRM-free alternative app store on Android to Google Play -- there is a business model there whereby developers could be compensated with a greater cut of app sales in a guaranteed DRM-free store.

I can't help but wonder how the world would be different if we'd managed to find common public ground on TWC back in the early 2000s.

DRM would still be broken AND we'd have over a half billion units of robust secure HW with at least one main-stream, non-closed, no-license-required, no-single-key-authority SW platform on top of it.

The Palladium we were building was a vastly more neutral set of capabilities than what has followed.

"They feared that Microsoft would use the technology to exert control over which software could be executed on Windows PCs"

That's here today and it's called Metro. This scheme is brilliant because they get to achieve that all without DRM!

Microsoft is just lubricating you up for the day they effectively kill the now-legacy desktop mode. Notice how they already force you to use the start screen, despite the negative feedback I am sure they must have gotten during testing and development.

And why would they want to keep the desktop around or at least keep updating it? They have all the reasons in the world to disincentivize everyone from using it, and would likely tie new system features or new APIs to Metro. Where are they going their cut of app store revenue from if people keep using desktop mode?

And unlike Android, since they've made it illegal to distribute and install Metro apps on your own (save for exempted internal corp apps), they have the power of the state to back them up. They don't really care about the small fry distributing Metro apps on the "dark nets"; they just care about the commercial publishers.

And I'll note that three of the biggest lessons of the darknet are still being learned only very slowly.

1. It doesn't actually matter if your content is on windows, or beos, or cp/m, or only confined to some single special game console. Any platform widely distributed enough to be economically useful will allow "global secrets" (media content) to be transformed into "global publics" (cracked files) which then can and will be played on all of those other platforms.

But not necessarily useful. There are, to the best of my knowledge, no useful cracks for Sky TV ("useful" meaning "permits realtime watching of encrypted satellite broadcasts without having to give any money to Rupert Murdoch"), so if you want Sky's first run content as it's made available, the "darknet" isn't much use.

If you're willing to wait a few hours (or sometimes days) then the situation improves.

And I'll note that three of the biggest lessons of the darknet are still being learned only very slowly.

1. It doesn't actually matter if your content is on windows, or beos, or cp/m, or only confined to some single special game console. Any platform widely distributed enough to be economically useful will allow "global secrets" (media content) to be transformed into "global publics" (cracked files) which then can and will be played on all of those other platforms.

But not necessarily useful. There are, to the best of my knowledge, no useful cracks for Sky TV ("useful" meaning "permits realtime watching of encrypted satellite broadcasts without having to give any money to Rupert Murdoch"), so if you want Sky's first run content as it's made available, the "darknet" isn't much use.

If you're willing to wait a few hours (or sometimes days) then the situation improves.

Sky TV (amongst others) is what I had in mind with my original comment. DRM isn't about perfection, or eternity. Just good enough, long enough.